1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor including a dielectric ceramic.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a multilayer ceramic capacitor is composed of a laminated body in the form of a cuboid and external electrodes. The laminated body has ceramic dielectric layers, and internal electrodes disposed to be opposed to each other between the ceramic dielectric layers and extended to both ends of the laminated body. The external electrodes are connected to the extended internal electrodes at both ends of the laminated body. This laminated body includes an inner layer part and outer layer parts. The inner layer part has a plurality of internal electrodes disposed to be opposed to each other. The outer layer parts each refer to a part between two internal electrodes disposed outermost among the plurality of internal electrodes and side surfaces of the laminated body opposed to the two internal electrodes, that is, a part of the laminated body outside the inner layer part. The outer layer parts and the inner layer part are typically formed from the same material (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-084692).
In addition, in mounting the multilayer ceramic capacitor onto a circuit board, depending on the orientation of the multilayer ceramic capacitor, the circuit board may be disposed parallel to the internal electrodes, or the circuit board may be disposed perpendicular to the internal electrodes. The multilayer ceramic capacitor may, depending on such a positional relationship between the circuit board and the internal electrodes, vary in floating capacitance value to influence characteristics of the multilayer ceramic capacitor.
Therefore, for mounting the multilayer ceramic capacitor onto a circuit board, when the multilayer ceramic capacitor is packaged with the orientation of the internal electrodes aligned in advance so as to make uniform the positional relationship between the circuit board and the internal electrodes, the capacitor can be mounted so as to align the positional relationship between the circuit board and the internal electrodes, and variations in characteristics of the multilayer ceramic capacitor can be reduced.
However, because the internal electrodes are buried in the laminated body, there has been a problem that it is difficult to recognize the laminating direction of the internal electrodes by the appearance of the multilayer ceramic capacitor when the multilayer ceramic capacitor is square or rectangular close to square in cross section.